While consumers have long been assumed to be in need of protection from drug promotion, it is now accepted that marketing to medical professionals should also be more closely controlled. Public health advocates have effectively highlighted the negative impact of promotion on quality use of medicines. Hans Löfgren and Evan Doran describe developments in Australia’s regulation of prescription drug marketing and promotion and show that the pharmaceutical industry has proved less capable of shaping the regulation of promotion than other areas of pharmaceutical policy. Government has responded by tightening such regulation but why has it stopped short of ending industry self-regulation?